Day 42 (Mon) - Plumber and Staining

Woo hoo, the pain in the butt plumber was fired over the weekend and a new one started this afternoon. He actually showed up which is a plus over the other one. He has a few new ideas so back to looking into the plumbing fixtures a little.

I took vacation this week to stain doors and trim, can't do everything at the last minute since it all takes time. I waited all day for the stuff to arrive, finally at 3:30pm the carpenter showed up. Good thing I didn't wait around for him. I got some errands done and followed up on the cabinets, Home Depot toilet order, and returned tiles from a lot of places. Here is my garage full of doors and trim. Not enough saw horses to do everything in one batch. Looks like this will take all week as I expected.

Day 40/41 (Sat/Sun) - Tile and Decisions

Sat - Since our last tile selection fell thru we decided to head out tile shopping. But first we went to a close out sale at Intermatic and bought a ton of Malibu type lights for $1 each. what a deal. Anyway, back to the project.

We drove to 1 place in Elgin, 2 in Crystal Lake, and 1 in Cary. We brought samples home and let everyone debate over them at my parents house while we celebrated our nephew Bradley's birthday.

Sun - Looked at the tiles some more in the daylight and made a selection. Unfortunantly our selection means now we have to drive all over the place and return the tiles. And we selected tiles from 3 locations which means more driving. My contractor thinks we are nuts. To make sure everything matched we drove back to Lake Zurich and picked up the decorative tile from there.

Day 39 (Fri) - Poly and Fireplace flashing

Today nobody showed up so I decided to get some of those yucky projects done myself. So.....I removed old flashing on the fireplace where it used to stick out the roof. And then I sprayed bleach on the brick to clean it then washed it down with soap and water. I didn't want moss and mold growing inside my drywall in the future.




I also polyurethaned the windows, one coat so far.

Day 37/38 (Wed/Thu) - Staining Windows and Fireplace

Wed - I started to stain the windows in the addition, there are a lot of them when you start staining it feels like forever to get thru a round of staining them.

These french doors lead to the balcony once it is built.





Thu - Another round of staining for the windows. And the see-thru fireplace arrived. Hard to take a picture of it because it is in the garage. We needed to get it here so we could frame for it.

Day 36 (Tue) - Fixtures

Nothing big today on the project, mostly debated on the plumbing fixture list with the pain in the butt plumber.

Day 32 - 35 (Fri-Mon) - Fireplace and Windows

Friday - The brick layers came back and finished the fireplace, now we are ready for winter again.

The carpenter gang was back and they installed all the windows so we can actually stop looking at the word Tyvek on the windows. They also opened up the stairway area so we now have head clearance.

It was a busy day, I also met with another cabinet guy and my fireplace guy. Now I just need some quotes to figure this all out.



Sat - Ran around all morning to get the laundry room sink, faucet, and drain purchased. Then we ordered the toilet and will get that in a few days.

Sun - A day of number crunching on the budget but no real work on the project.

Mon - Nobody is coming today, woo hoo, Bailey can sleep and I can actually go into my office for a change. Lot's of phone calls and following up though.

Day 31 (Thu) - Fireplace Day

Today is fireplace day. The brick layers are here to extend the old 2 wood burning fireplaces up thru the addition and new roof.


In addition to that fireplace I am also working on a design for the new gas fireplace and mantel area. We are trying to decide if the whole thing looks too big. Any input?

How about this option, with has no mantel.


Or this with a mantel?

Day 29-30 (Tue/Wed) - Electrical work

Tue and Wed were primarily consumed by the electricians. They have about 1 day of work left which will be done next week sometime. Hard to show progress via pictures on that but here is an attempt. I also ran all the cable for the internet so that is complete too. My work are the blue boxes :) (5 internet connections, leave it to Jeff to overkill that one)

The other things we are working on are more quotes on cabinets, plumbing, and the fireplace.

Day 26/27/28 - (Sat/Sun/Mon) My little project

Fri and then again Sat we picked out our master bath and laundry room tile. These pictures aren't that great but the 4"X4" is the wall tile and the 13"x13" is the floor tile. The one in the middle is an accent tile we are going to do around the tub and around the shower area in one stripe. Hard to explain but more photos will come later at installation.


I decided to make the stair landing between the basement stairs and the new set of stairs my little holiday weekend project. We added a double support beam along the chimney which really firmed up the floor and it even took out the 1/4" sag in it.



Then I dug out more the chimney area and capped it with a piece of wood and filled it with mortar mix to make it solid and reinforce all the pounding the chimney has taken during the project. And as we always do, we left our mark on the project for the next owners to find some day. Jeff made me put Bailey's actual footprint in the mortar mix.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the making of this project.

Day 25 (Fri) - Shopping

Today Jeff and I took a vacation day and we went shopping. We looked at another fireplace the builder wanted us to look at, then lighting fixtures, then another cabinet place, and finally to the tile shop we went to a month or so ago.

Here are the lighting selections we made, they are all on order.

We picked out tile but are waiting for pricing to see if we are in budget. And waiting for cabinet and fireplace pricing for a comparison.

Day 24 (Thu) - Stairs

Woo hoo we got stairs today!!!! No more scaffold and ladder.

Here is the old way to access the addition, plank to ladder to top of scaffold.

Here is the lower set of stairs to the landing where the direction changes.


Here is the upper set of stairs down to the landing.

Day 22-23 (Tue-Wed)

Tue and Wed were slower days, just the roofers were here. Although the roof was a lot of work and it does look nice. It is nice to finally not worry as much about rain in the forecast. The shingles have a small red accent in them to pull out the red in the brick. Hard to see in the photos.

The biggest accomplishment was actually selecting all the plumbing fixtures. We went to Fergusons in Mundelein on Wed night and picked out everything from the bubble jet tub to the sinks and faucets and shower door, everything in one trip. I can't believe we made all those decisions in about 1 hour. We decided to go with brushed nickel for the fixtures.